


i'm afraid of the way i live my life

by anatomied



Series: send our love to its reward down in hell [2]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, M/M, Pre-Fake AH Crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 22:29:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9569561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatomied/pseuds/anatomied
Summary: Ray's got a list of things he doesn't tell anyone through hell or high water, not even the crew. When Ryan Haywood joins the Fake AH Crew, that list starts getting longer.





	

**Author's Note:**

> College has been kicking my ass up and down the block, you guys. But I finally got this done - and I'm pretty proud of this one, all things considered. I also decided Ray would absolutely not see the importance of the moments Ryan did, so here's a fresh series of Things That Have Occurred in my canon.

The worst questions in the world, as far as Ray’s concerned, always begin with the phrase _how did a kid like you_. Just about any fucking thing in the world can come after it, but it’s always a bad question. It usually means he’s being held up to some kind of standard or norm. Ray isn’t good at a lot of things. Living up to expectations that aren’t, say, Geoff’s expectations happens to be around eighty percent of them.

For example: _how did a kid like you make it through high school without getting murdered_ , or _how did a kid like you drop out of high school_.

Then there’s Ray’s absolute favorite, the true all-time classic: _how did a kid like you get into sniping?_

The answers to those, in no particular order, are:  _grew up poor_ , _no hope or money_ , and _carefully_.

Ryan actually taught him a new response to that last one recently. A guy unfortunately saw Ryan’s face without the paint during a robbery, way too soft for his own good, and asked something like _how the fuck did a guy like you get a reputation as a mercenary_.

 _You’re about to find out_ , Ryan told him, this horrific smirk instantly leaping into action, and cut him open gut to sternum. It was kind of awesome. Bloody, too. Ray still hasn’t gotten some of the bloodstains out of that pair of jeans, so that’s why they’re still sitting in his room, folded up (by Ryan, who took them to clean them and lied about having some amazing foolproof way to get blood out of clothes, what a fucking diva).

Hell, Ryan’s taught Ray a lot of things - like that Shakespeare writes in a thing called iambic pentameter, and what a margin of error really means in polls on the news, and how to build a makeshift shiv out of a shard of glass, a rubber band, and a lot of “not having strong emotions about cutting open your hand on glass,” direct quote. It’s because Ryan’s a huge fucking dweeb when he’s not busy slaughtering dozens of innocent and guilty people. Not that Ray can judge. He plays video games about shooting people in between for real shooting people. He’s still not sure what that says about him. And he’s not planning to pay a therapist to find out.

At this point Ryan even counts as a pseudo-therapist that probably encourages the bad shit instead of banishing it. So if anyone asks, Ray’ll just say he’s got therapy covered, thank you very fucking much.

\---

Paleto Bay is and always will be a shithole.

It’s okay to pass through, or look at photos of on Google, but whenever someone mentions it, Ray feels the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Hell on Earth, that’s what small towns were. A lot of people assume with the way he acts and the ease with which he exists in Los Santos that he grew up here, that he’s an urban kind of guy. He wears the look pretty well. He talks the talk and walks the walk.

The joke’s on them, though.

Ray Narvaez, Jr. grew up in Paleto Bay, a small town where every single person, next door neighbor up to politician, found out in two days of him being born that his father had fucked off and left his mom to pick up the pieces. This led to two kinds of neighbors: the ones that gave Ray and his mom pitying looks as she pushed a cart around the grocery store, and the ones that passed judgment instantly on the single mom with son combo.

The first time Ray was ever bullied was in middle school. Glasses, skinny as a God damn rail, absent father - the three ingredients in the all-American fodder for bullies. He openly played video games. The result couldn’t have been more textbook.

So this kid comes in and does the cool cliche thing where he held Ray up against a locker and said some things like _look at this scrawny little fuck_.

 _Fuck you_ , Ray remembers saying, which wasn’t a cool quip but it got the point across. While this eighth grader was struggling with being told _fuck you_ by a sixth grader, Ray hit him in the gut.

Look. He liked beating people’s expectations.

He also got suspended for three days for fighting back. The eighth grader was richer than him, which meant the suspension was inevitable. No one wants to have the balls to risk a lawsuit, after all.

That pretty much set the tone for the rest of his time in the Paleto Bay school system.

The watershed moment was probably his junior year of high school.

Junior year, he met Michael Jones.

Michael Jones was honest to God from Los Santos. He had ended up in Paleto Bay in his junior year thanks to some messy divorce proceedings, and he bounced back and forth between the two places, picking up traits from each of them like lint. Either way, he and Ray met in U.S. history of all places. Ray doesn’t remember their first conversation as well as Michael does. Apparently Michael asked some question and the teacher made a shitty comment back. That sounded about right for Mrs. Lowes.

Ray had, according to the guy with the actual memory, mumbled something like _whatever, don’t be a cunt about the fact that white people were here second_.

It seemed that had been enough to catch Michael’s interest. The only distinct memory Ray has of Michael early on was that one time they were sitting in the cafeteria and Michael said something like _what if I told you my dad’s a huge criminal_.

Ray stared down at the sickly off-green color of the peas on his Styrofoam plate. _I’d tell you that’s super fucking sick, dude_.

 _I mean a real criminal, Ray, like literal gang shit_.

 _Then I’d tell you to not get yourself fucking shot in Los Santos, ‘cause I assume I will never find out about your funeral_ . _I’ll be burying someone else and I’ll wander around in the graveyard like oh shit, there’s that fucker from high school after all._

By the time they both got to Los Santos in their senior year, dropping out of high school and dropping even the pretense of being _nice kids_ , Ray with nothing but a backpack and a bright pink sniper rifle he had got on discount because of the paint job and Michael with a dead dad and a legacy, it turned out future Ray should’ve maybe gone back and told past Ray to get fucked.

He was the first one out of the two of them to get shot. That’s what he’s saying.

They were trying to get out of an altercation with five guys ready to kill Michael. Michael had picked up demolitions at some point - mixing things and building bombs.

Sometimes you blow up the wrong building for a freelance job or otherwise demolish two instead of one, whatever, it’s fine. Sometimes you blow up someone else’s base of operations on accident, and it gets a lot less fine.

Getting shot is one thing Ray remembers crystal clear from the early pre-Fake AH days. Michael grabbed one of the guys and was trying to beat him into the ground. Ray pulled a knife but the other guy shot him in the arm.

“Oh, shit,” Ray said, and stabbed the guy anyway even as numbness crawled up and down his arm. If he didn’t look at it, it didn’t exist. That was how the wisdom went, wasn’t it? Michael had gotten hit a few times in the head and one guy grabbed Ray by the injured shoulder. And that was it. Ray made a yelp he didn’t know he was capable of making, vibrating out of his throat and chest at a higher pitch than he could’ve imagined.

Years later, Michael would make fun of that noise.

He swung and slammed the pommel of the knife into the guy’s nose with a crunch.

At the time, the only reason they didn’t end up as another statistic on the Los Santos Police Department’s records was because Jack and Geoff were keeping an eye on them.

They pulled some honest-to-God superhero shit. Jack with a machine gun and Geoff with two pistols, because even pre-crew, they were still willing to run with the image if nothing else.

They needed a demolitions guy. A sniper was a nice bonus in the package, and it was even better if said people were in their debt. So Jack sewed Ray up, and Geoff made them an offer. Michael was the third guy on the list of demolition experts they had gathered up. Almost no one else in Los Santos would commit to robbing a major bank as their very first crime as a group.

Almost.

Then there was Michael.

 _We’re bringing some much fucking needed spectacle back into Los Santos crime_ , Geoff told them in one of the safehouses, his hands steepled in front of him as if he was some kind of mastermind. He was, in a weird way.

Ray and Michael looked at each other. Ray shrugged even as his shoulder throbbed dully. Jack had given him some painkillers, but it was just aspirin versus a gaping wound. Nothing better for them to do except continue living on packs of ramen and rice, and said packages of ramen and rice were the only thing they had to lose out of this. And their lives. But that was the point of crime from day one. Michael grinned.

“Okay,” he said, “sure, why the fuck not.”

Geoff’s smile looked more like a victorious snarl.

You almost die once, after all, and the rest of it doesn’t seem half as bad. You keep almost dying, and almost dying, and almost dying, and suddenly death doesn’t seem like it can do shit to you to begin with. It still can, of course. His mom once told him that the minute you think something can’t hurt you, it will. That wasn’t a lesson you had to teach adults - only stupid kids.

Ray would revise that statement she made to be a little more accurate.

Because you’re young, you think nothing can hurt you.

Something can.

\---

When he says _something_ , he means that weird thing his heart does, pumping too fast and violently, when one of the crew gets hurt. Ray didn’t think he’d really care about someone besides Michael. Jack and Geoff were smart and not _bad guys_ , which maybe shows how low his standards are. Gavin was - Gavin, which means to say a walking fucking disaster.

Ray was convinced at least one of them was going to die, and therefore it wasn’t any use giving a shit. Maybe it was going to be him. But that was something he was prepared for. He was ready to die. He expected it. But the first time he figured out something was up was this time where they were split up - Michael, Gavin, and Ray setting up a distraction while Geoff and Jack got the goods - and Jack got himself shot.

It was a weird idea to everyone. Jack patched everyone else up from getting shot.

Michael had got himself shot in the hand earlier, sure, but that was normal. Michael was loud and boisterous and would probably consider a job a failure if he _didn’t_ end up with at least one new wound.

Then, Geoff’s voice, crackling through the radio: _uh, you guys, Jack’s been shot_.

“Fuck!” Michael roared, slamming his injured hand on the dashboard as they swerved in and out of traffic. Ray muttered _God damn it_ to himself and kept firing out the window. A few police officers toppled over. Cars skidded out of their way.

Ray presses a hand to his earpiece. “Geoff? How bad?” It’s weird he’s the one asking this, but there’s some legitimate concern.

 _I mean_ , Geoff begins.

It’s bad.

“Where are you?” Ray interrupts. “Where the fuck are you guys?”

 _We’re holed up in an alley near Third and Benson_. Geoff’s breathing is heavy. _Lost the cops, but it’s pretty easy to see us if one of them decides to wise the fuck up_.

“Okay. Okay. Third and Benson, Michael, you got me?”

“I got you.”

“You okay, Geoff?” Gavin asks.

 _I’m good, I’m good, I’m just - trying to apply pressure to this fucker’s wound, stop it, Jack, you can’t patch yourself up like this, you dumb fuck_ -

“Jack,” Ray snaps, “sit fucking still and don’t try to be the hero, okay.”

Jack’s voice leaks in through the earpiece, soft but laughing a little. _Since when am I the fucking hero, let’s not get overdramatic here_. Says the guy probably bleeding out right now in a Los Santos gutter.

“You’ve saved my life like, ten times in the past two months alone,” Michael points out.

Even Gavin joins in with the _give a possibly dying Jack Pattillo warm compliments_ train. “Yeah, you’re really the most heroically qualified out of all of us. But don’t start being a knob about it.”

“A _knob_ ,” Michael repeats, turning Gavin’s accent especially derisive. And Cockney.

“Don’t talk about knobs at a time like this, Michael.”

“I didn’t start it, you shithead, you did -”

“Don’t fucking argue,” Ray intercedes. “Just - just shut the fuck up, Gavin, or else your stupid fucking nose is not making it home tonight without me putting a bullet through it.”

Gavin squeaks.

Michael still cuts in. “Ray, do it, there’d still be maybe fifteen square miles of nose to spare.”

They make it to Third Street and Benson Avenue without Michael ripping Gavin’s head off his shoulders, so that’s a positive.

Ray’s the first one barreling out of the car, and there are two parts of his head at war here. One of them is screaming at him for the sudden poisonous bout of caring that’s sprung up inside of his heart. He’s _scared_. For Jack. For everyone else, too, but especially Jack. The other half is absolutely determined to get over there. He hops a railing and immediately spots the two familiar shapes of Jack and Geoff huddled at the end of the alley. He waves and one hand waves back. The other shape seems to be trying its hardest to wave but having serious problems.

Everyone ends up gathered at the end of the alley. Geoff and Michael are helping Jack up. Ray covers the end of the alley behind them, aim swinging from one end of the alley’s mouth to the other.

Gavin gets the car started. Then he gets in the back, because he knows better.

“Jack,” Geoff says, “what do you need?”

Jack groans and drops his head down as they get him around the railing. Then he looks up after a second to recuperate. His glasses are knocked askew, fogging up a little with how hard he’s breathing. “Who’s got steady hands under pressure?”

Michael and Ray raise their hands. Demolitions expert and sniper, of course. Gavin’s too flaky by far and Geoff gets shaky under adrenaline, not sure. Michael’s left hand drips blood down onto the sidewalk. “Not you,” Jack says, angling one hand weakly towards Michael. “Definitely not you. Ray, you’re in the back with me.”

That’s how Ray ends up sitting in the back of the sedan and applying pressure to a wound in Jack’s side with some gauze, refusing to move even as the car shakes back and forth. He even lets Gavin use his pistol, which shows how desperate this is. Once or twice Jack starts to seemingly pass out, head dropping and his responses getting dull and slow. Ray actually feels panic swivel upright in his chest, an animal, and he adjusts his angle so he can press down on the wound with one hand and smack Jack with the other.

“Jack!” he snaps. “You are not fucking dying on me today, buddy, we can’t fucking afford a medic like you, cause we aren’t the one-fucking-percent, okay -”

“Whoa, Ray, don’t sound worried or anything.” He’s going to fucking kill Michael later.

“Shut the _fuck up_ ,” Ray snaps, because he doesn’t care, he doesn’t, but some odd faucet is leaking and he doesn’t have the fucking time or presence of mind to stop it.

They make it back to the base and that’s how Ray learns how to take a bullet out of someone. It’s not a perfect job. Jack still has problems with the nerves on that side once in a while, numbness or a twinge of pain. But it’s better than being dead. That’s how low their standards are - _better than being dead._

But he still thinks about that moment sometimes, a year or two years or four years out. How he was lying to himself about _not caring_. He still maintains his trademark deadpan most of the time. It takes extreme circumstances to surprise him.

Still. The stars align right, God smiles in the right way, whatever - and it happens.

\---

It took Ray a while to realize how he felt about his job. Sniping for a while was a necessity, because it was that or starve. So that worked out fine. But he kept getting better and richer with the help of Geoff and Jack’s well-established contact list. A contract here, a distraction there, and soon Ray was rolling in enough cash where he didn’t have to worry about getting a job done for the paycheck alone.

He could’ve quit, to be honest, and lived in the middle of nowhere with a high-speed Internet connection and takeout until he died.

He wasn’t even sure what he really liked about it. Parts of it were tedious - the waiting, the setup.

But the tension was all worth it. There’s this moment, right, when he sees the target and he’s got to do all these minute calculations - wind speed, angle, focus, distance - in a few split seconds unless it’s a really lazy day, and then pull the trigger. The tension at that moment is something he could probably live off of - food and water and shelter all in one. It’s not normal or healthy but it’s _his_ in the way a lot of things aren’t.

Bad, bad shit.

Because it isn’t like a video game. People assume but they’re dead fucking wrong (really truly dead once Ray gets a bullet in between their eyes, ha). It’s how he can handle playing Call of Duty without flinching and then get up the next morning and kill some guys pointing guns at his friends. Because Call of Duty doesn’t get all the nuances. You squeeze a trigger either way and someone dies, sure, but there’s this second where the gun kicks back hard, and he’s done all the calculations perfectly - minutes of angle, wind, distance - and the bullet punctures straight through someone’s skull, breaks out the other side -

There’s no feeling like that in the whole world.

None. He’s never even told Michael about that, because he’s pretty sure Michael would just go _you really do fuckin’ need to get laid, holy shit_.

Which - fair, maybe, but he won’t deny himself the little things like that.

He’s tried to find other things. But they don’t work. Which means he’s not leaving this job until he dies or everyone else does and Ray’s left crippled.

Do this until he ends up in the grave. His mother would not be proud.

\---

Ray has a list of things he doesn’t tell anyone in the crew. They’re itemized in his head, one to four. And it’s not because he couldn’t handle the teasing, or because he thinks it makes him look weak (he’s a Part Of The Crew, capitalized, for God’s sake). But it’s just because it doesn’t feel right. It just feels like it would complicate things. It would complicate the persona he projects out to Los Santos and to them. _Ray doesn’t care, Ray’s easygoing, Ray’s skill doesn’t come with any baggage._

Sometimes he just runs through them in his head to make sure they’re in the right order and he won’t let anything slip on accident, while high. Or if he gets what Jack calls _contact drunk_ , where proximity to drunk people also makes you dumber.

It’s The List. And it looks like this.

  1. He still sends money back to his mother in Paleto Bay every month, making up a lie where he’s managing a GameStop now, and he’s successful, and _nothing’s wrong, yeah, no, love you, mom, I’ve never seen a gun before in my whole God damned life, not even in Los Santos, fucking gun capital of the west coast_. He’ll visit soon. He won’t. He really won’t.


  1. It’s very easy to be deadpan when you’re not really deadpan at all, because everything has an equal and opposite reaction.


  1. One time, Ray looked up his dad. Old man’s got a new last name, whether it was legally or illegally changed, and a new wife. Kids aren’t a thing. Unsurprising considering how fast he got out when Ray came into existence. He’s living in Los Santos right now. They could’ve passed by him any time in the street. They could’ve shot him. And that’s where Ray stopped looking, because you know what, there wasn’t any point in caring that much.


  1. The thing that scares him the most in the whole fucking world isn’t _bad weed_ , or _caring too much_ , or even _caring at all_. It’s the knowledge that there’s probably something wrong with him, a switch turned over wrong, where sniping and heisting are probably the only things in the world he’d be able to do for a living without killing himself a year or two in.



He’s gotten good at what one could call lies by omission. He leaves things out. He says just enough. And that’s where he stops.

\---

First impressions of the Vagabond - or Ryan, whatever - went like this: he sat down at the table and Gavin instantly opened with questions. Ray didn’t care all that much. He doubted this guy was going to stick around after the heist. Call it a stupid assumption, but he seemed like the flighty type. And depending on how well the heist went and Geoff’s mood, Ray _might_ just have to kill him for it. Maybe. It’s all up in the air.

He realizes Gavin hasn’t shut the fuck up. And the guy doesn’t quite look uncomfortable, but there’s a tension that Gavin’s too oblivious to notice. Michael’s always happy to let Gavin dig his own grave, which means it’s Ray’s job to keep Gavin just this once from getting thrown into an actual honest to God grave.

From what he heard about the Vagabond, the guy’s that type.

So he asks more politely than usual for Gavin to shut the fuck up. Then he has to tell Gavin again why he hates him so much (e.g. all the usual reasons, e.g. fucking _everything_ ).

Haywood proceeds to get more than three syllables in. And there’s a drawl there that isn’t quite an accent but definitely isn’t California either, nothing Ray’s familiar with. He gets his answer like, a minute later though when the guy admits he’s from Georgia of all places. Fucking _Georgia_ , the polar opposite of California in politics and people.

“Aw, man,” Ray says, “don’t tell them you’re hanging out with a Mexican, or that I’m actually fucking Puerto Rican. They probably don’t even know what that is.”

There’s an odd light dancing behind this guy’s eyes. His eyes are very bright, and very blue, and somehow emptier than anything else Ray’s ever seen. “No worries. I don’t talk to them very much.”

Ray tilts his head. “Huh. Not a fan of your family?”

“Oh, no.” Ryan’s hand gently traces a groove in the table from where someone left a knife. Probably Michael. “Not in the fucking slightest.”

Gavin has since drifted off from the quieter tone of the conversation to go complain at Michael about something, and from the tones of their voices on the other side of the room, Michael’s having none of it.

Ray moves around the table to the chair directly to Ryan’s right. No need to shout at each other. “No Confederate flag on the back of the car? None of that Georgia pride?”

“Nope.” Ryan’s smile is more than a little unnerving. It’s very small, and slight, and it makes him look like a dad, or a guy who goes golfing on Sundays. Utterly normal. “I do know how to make real sweet tea, though, unlike everywhere else in the country. That’s about as far as it goes.”

“Huh. Okay. That’s fair.”

“What about you?” Ryan’s hand has settled flat again on the table. There are a few scars criss-crossing the back of his hand from knives or otherwise something sharp. “How’d you get here, Ray? Actually here from Puerto Rico, our almost-fifty-first state?” The way he says Ray’s name is odd - not with accent but with emphasis, as if the name somehow matters more than Gavin’s or Michael’s. It’s weird. Ray doesn’t want to prod, though, because hey, attachment’s for fucking losers.

The question does make him laugh, a small huff of air. “Nah. Not really. I’m from Paleto Bay. My parents are Puerto Rican, though, so it’s close enough.”

“Not cultural assimilating by culturally assimilating,” Ryan says, as if that’s somehow a joke with the way his smile widens a little.

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ryan says, getting up and _ruffling Ray’s hair_.

Ray smacks his arm hard. Ryan chuckles even harder, and Ray’s not sure what to think. Does he even like this guy? Is this guy even a real _person_ , this weird dad-looking kind of man with a criminal record long enough to make the California state constitution look abridged? Don’t ask how he knows about the California constitution - he and Michael both had a very, very fucking evil government teacher in high school.

Ray’s not sure he knows who Ryan Haywood _is_ , while at the same time being absolutely fucking certain he gets it.

Geoff wasn’t kidding when he sat them down for a briefing and told them that Haywood was “a real fucking piece of work, even by my low standards.”

Ray thought he knew what Geoff meant by _pieces of work_ , real tough guys, dozens of tattoos and killing a guy in prison, talking shit and everything. Ray knows how to handle those types of guys.

This is not that. This is something else. This is something new and possibly lethal.

\---

He doesn’t _not_ like Ryan.

He doesn’t like him, either. He’s just not sure what to think. It’s pretty crystal clear that Ryan likes him, though, which also puts Ray in a weird position.

After the big shootout goes down - after Ryan proves he’s probably got some secret super soldier serum injected into him at college in Georgia, is what Ray means - they circle very soft and quiet around each other. The convenience store thing happened. Ryan places a lot of emphasis on that, and from that point on, Ray does learn a lot. He learns the tone Ryan gets right before he’s about to kill someone. He learns the little physical tics that Ryan has. He learns the tone Ryan gets _after_ he kills someone, lazy and smug - like a cat, self-satisfied with what it’s done.

The outright worst (read: most fucked) thing Ray figures out is about how Ryan looks after he’s - gotten information from someone, as Ryan delicately calls it.

Read: tortured someone.

The Fake AH Crew doesn’t historically torture people. It’s not their thing. They’re about drama and bombast, a one-two punch combo, giving the Los Santos police matching black eyes and disappearing back into the night. They buy and con their way to information. Gavin’s good at that. He comes in with some charm and some innocuous idiocy and comes out with the riches and the passwords and the times and the dates and everything they need stored on his phone or on a voice recorder.

But they’re debating over the kitchen table how to get at this one guy, last name of Michaels, who’s got some info on a shipment of drugs moving into Los Santos.

“He’s cartel,” Ray points out. “He’s not going to give up the ghost just ‘cause Gavin trips over himself and spills a fucking coffee all over him.”

Gavin’s outrage is audible. “I would _not_ just spill a coffee all over him.”

“He’s got cartel connections,” Jack corrects. “He isn’t actually in the cartel.”

“Okay,” Geoff says, leaning forward. “So we buy the info from him.”

“The cartel’ll kill him,” Michael snaps. “He’s not going to give us anything even if we give him enough cash to buy himself a whole new fucking life.”

The argument escalates over fifteen minutes. Geoff ends up with his head in his hands, and Jack and Michael are still going at it. Ryan has been sitting isolated and silent at the end of the table, his hands steepled, staring down at the map of Los Santos and the picture of the guy they’re after as if the answer will just manifest there.

“Ry,” Ray says, which is just something he’s started calling Ryan now, one syllable instead of two. “Got an idea on this?” The other people at the table aren’t even paying attention to them.

“Yeah,” Ryan says, leaning back. His chair creaks and pretty much everyone looks at him. Ryan has not been an _ideas guy_ so far. He’s been a _give me orders guy_. Sometimes a _find some loopholes with those orders guy_. “Yeah, I’ve got something.”

“Okay. Shoot.” Geoff seems interested. He likes input sometimes. Not all the time, though.

“I can go get the info.” That’s all he says.

Everyone pauses expectantly. Ryan looks back at them, his eyes bright.

“Okay. How?” Jack finally takes the bait.

Ryan’s smile is very small. It’s one even Ray hasn’t seen before. It’s kind of terrifying. “Y’know,” he says vaguely. “I’ve got ways.”

The only _ways_ Ryan has are with words (and the flubbing of them) and death, and sometimes both at once.

“Ah,” Geoff says, evidently getting it.

“Yup.”

Eventually they agree to let Ryan do whatever Ryan does. It’s not a comfortable bargain, but it’s the most rational one.

Ray doesn’t go with him, thank God. He sits on the couch for eight hours that Thursday, playing anything with bright pixels involved and refusing to think about what Ryan’s doing right now. He’s not sure how he feels. Violence is necessary. Sometimes excessive violence. But the way Ryan explained what he might do, at Geoff’s prodding, with this low rolling tone that came from his chest, his gut -

Ray doesn’t know how he feels. He doesn’t fucking know.

He tries to feel even less when Ryan finally walks in. “Next Sunday,” he tells Geoff calmly, “the pier, ship’s called the Ocelot, eight in the morning. Fucking early risers.”

“Nice. Thanks, man,” Geoff says. There’s something extra in his tone - a little bit of apprehension. Something’s there. Something’s going on, whether it’s with Ryan’s tone or his expression or some other visual problem. Ray doesn’t even want to fucking guess.

Then Ryan sits on the couch next to him, and Ray’s hands seize on the controller. He can see red on Ryan’s face and hands out of the corner of his eye. And then Ryan stretches and makes this soft noise from the back of his throat, and Ray’s hands squeeze the triggers so hard that the entire controller creaks loudly.

“Hey,” Ryan Haywood says easily, his hands absolutely fucking covered in dried blood as he leans closer Ray rotates to look at him, “I’ve got a new copy of Doom.”

Ray forces his voice to function properly. “Oh. Cool.” He focuses on the screen like he always does.

“Want to come back to my place after the crew grabs dinner?”

Ray is not going to fucking look. “Maybe,” he says.

There’s a long pause. Then Ryan’s tone turns concerned. “You okay?”

On screen, Super Meat Boy careens straight into a bunch of spikes and explodes into a mess of blood and meat. Ray absolutely gets that feeling all of a sudden. After a moment he leaves the character grinning widely at the top of the screen. “Yeah,” he says, finally turning to look at Ryan. “Yeah, I’m good.”

New update, for the people: Ryan still looks great while absolutely covered in blood. It makes his eyes look even brighter, in fact, which Ray is certain must break some kind of California law on levels of prettiness for a thirty-something year old guy. But what must’ve caught Geoff’s attention is how the usual paint is obscured, and where it isn’t obscured, it’s smudged, how close Ryan must’ve been leaning when he cut the guy’s throat. Or a major artery to inflict pain and panic.

He wants to ask a lot of questions. None of them are good to ask when Geoff’s wandering around the penthouse.

“You mentioned Doom, right?” he says.

“Yeah.” Ryan visibly relaxes. “Is that a yes to coming over?”

“Why not,” Ray says, trying to seem casual. Ryan nods and gets up, heading in the direction of the bathroom. To wash off all the blood, probably. And by the time Geoff orders pizza and everyone’s gathered around the island in the middle of the kitchen, Ryan’s hands and face are perfectly clean. No one says anything.

Ray chews on a piece of plain pizza, watching Ryan out of the corner of his eye, and it tastes like nothing at all.

They play Doom. Or, to be accurate, Ray plays Doom on the hardest opening difficulty on Ryan’s Xbox while Ryan props his feet up on the coffee table and looks utterly relaxed. Ray strafes around an imp and blows it away with a well-placed shotgun blast. Ryan hums appreciatively, relaxed as anything. Ray waits until a loading screen before popping the question. “What’d you do to that guy?”

Ryan pauses in the middle of reaching for his drink. “If you wanted to know,” he says slowly, “you could’ve just asked to go with me.”

The thumbsticks click softly underneath Ray’s hands. “I didn’t get that choice,” he says coolly. Good. Neutral response.

Ryan laughs. It’s the same laugh he let out when he was talking with Geoff about what he was going to do, a low huff of air from the chest that borders on threatening. “I would’ve gotten Geoff to say yes.” And there’s something Ray doesn’t quite like about that - the implication that Ryan can just _convince_ Geoff to do things, when Geoff is supposed to be the final word on just about everything. There’s something inherently shitty about that. It’s like - again, strict government teacher - if the director of the CIA could walk into the office and just tell the President what to do.

Actually, it makes Ryan sound like Dick Cheney.

Ray manages to not laugh at his own shitty comparison and guides his character towards hoisting himself onto a ledge. “I mean, sure, but still. You’re not answering the question, dude.”

“I’m not, that’s true,” Ryan agrees. He leans back. “But you’re interested, obviously. Next time, just let me know.”

“Okay,” Ray agrees. If there is a next time.

“But to answer your question, I did a few things. Threatened him at first, but he wouldn’t give in. So I had to get a little bloody with it. Took out an eye.” Ray makes a non-committal noise that he hopes sounds impressed enough. “And then individual fingers.” He makes another noise that will hopefully appease Ryan. “Which was what took a while, in case you’re wondering. Chopping off a finger with a larger knife might let shock set in right away. Numbs it. But you take a smaller knife, and you saw -”

“I get it.” Ray then closes his eyes. Bad idea. Bad choice.

The silence is deafening. Ray unnecessarily shoots an explosive barrel on screen just so something will make some fucking noise. His breath is sitting somewhere inside his chest, refusing to move. He’s never felt like this before with Ryan - never felt like he really needed to calculate his reactions. If he comes down to it, if Ryan truly is as volatile as Geoff first called it, then Ray’s still strapped.

Then again, who the fuck is he kidding? He’s a sniper. Ryan treats gutting someone with a balletic kind of grace.

He glances over at Ryan finally. Ryan’s looking at him. There’s no anger there. There’s this curiosity, though, like when a dog tilts its head and looks at you. “I bet you do,” Ryan says very deliberately.

“I mean,” Ray begins, already backpedaling, “I’ve never cut a dude’s fingers off with a tiny fucking knife, I’ll admit, don’t let me take that away from you -”

“That’s not what I was saying at all.” Ryan’s grin only widens. “I’m just saying that you get it.”

He feels a little sick with relief. He probably shouldn’t. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Guy on your left, just so you know.” Ray follows directions, swiveling and dodging and unloading on the enemy with his machine gun until it falls over. “I’m not saying you _would_ cut someone’s fingers off, by the way.”

“... Thanks?” Ray raises the _s_ into a question.

“I’m saying,” Ryan continues, “you have the _capacity_ to.”

“Um.” Ray sort of wants to laugh but he’s not sure why. “... Thanks again?”

“You’re welcome,” Ryan says nearly playfully.

Ray says nothing for a few moments. He navigates through an entire complex and multi-tiered room of enemies, switching from gauss cannon to double-barreled shotgun to rocket launcher across a few minutes of gameplay. He doesn’t say a damn thing the whole time. Neither does Ryan. The two of them seem equally focused on the screen.

Ryan finally opens his mouth again. “I really do like you, Ray.”

Ray scoffs. “How can you not like me. I’m all sunshine and fucking roses.”

“Oh, definitely,” Ryan hums. Ray chuckles softly to himself and something loosens between them. He goes back to trying to tear Hell a new asshole in a video game world where everything is very simple, and there isn’t the image of Ryan’s unimaginably careful hands using a very small knife to saw away at a man’s fingers pasted in the back of his mind.

Ray still doesn’t know what Ryan meant. Or he does but he doesn’t like to look at it or acknowledge it.

In the end, he decides that as long as Ryan doesn’t start towing dead bodies home for him like some kind of cat with dead bugs to present to its owner, he’ll be okay. 

\---

What really slows things down is the fact that Ray doesn’t know how to handle someone like Ryan. When Ryan made that offer - _after the heist, you need to do something like this, let me know_ \- Ray almost wanted to deny him out of spite. Because no one gets him that fast. No one’s that smart, or that fucking observant, where they translate everything Ray does from fiction to fact in the space of one meeting.

Maybe Ray’s really obvious. But the rest of the crew isn’t stupid. They would’ve noticed by now. They would’ve said something.

So. Maybe it just comes down to the fact that Ryan’s too God damn smart.

And Ray doesn’t quite trust really smart criminals that border on actual supervillains. They might be extra good backstabbers. Or Ryan might be a crazy stalker type. So it takes two more heists and a few more incidents where Ryan proves that he isn’t out to kill the rest of the crew and dump Ray in a basement somewhere before Ray starts to actually be okay with him besides casually playing video games and, well.

The talking about torture thing was just one time. Which is good for Ryan because otherwise Ray probably would’ve fucking bailed if it kept being brought up.

Ryan starts doing this thing where he seems to be actually paying attention to his earpiece. That means he actually pays attention to all the stupid shit everyone’s saying, especially Ray. Ray figures that out after he brings a scrap of paper and tallies up the number of times he makes shitty jokes versus the number of times Ryan laughs at some of his shitty jokes.

It’s a one to one ratio. Every. Single. Joke. Earns him at least a chuckle.

Including the pun. The pun is the lowest standard of humor possible, and Ryan laughs in the middle of shooting a guy in the head.

Truly: what the everliving fuck is going on?

Ray can’t ask anyone else because they won’t know. He’s sure as hell not going to ask Ryan. He’d get some weird cryptic and/or creepy answer, like _I just think you’re funny, Ray_.

Yeah. Not asking Ryan “Part-Time Hannibal Lecter” Haywood.

Not only would he not get an answer, it would reveal that Ray’s noticed or that he cares. And he can’t have that.

The thing is that Ryan’s also funny. It’s like the opposite of Ray’s deadpan humor. Ryan makes threatening shit sound hilarious, and charismatic, and like something you might agree with. And he fucks up words, which is legitimately a source of humor for everyone else, Ray included.

It’s around the time him and Ryan get their first in-joke that Ray realizes he might as well give up the fucking ghost. He’s done. The goose is fucking cooked and burnt to death.

Ryan and him are - friends. Yeah. Friends.

 _Friends_ is the confirmed correct word for the way Ray’s quietly caught Ryan looking at him sometimes, something open and hungry and fond all at once.

\---

One day, while Ray’s laying on the hood of Ryan’s car and tossing caramel popcorn onto his mouth, Ryan leans on the hood next to him.

They’re a few miles outside of Los Santos. In a fucking field of grass, probably closer to one of the smaller towns surrounding Los Santos than the city itself. But they aren’t close to Paleto Bay, so he doesn’t really care.

Ryan’s got that fucking earnest look pasted on, the two of them nearly eye-to-eye, Ray’s sneakers kicked out nearly off the hood. Ray, to his credit, wedged his arms behind his head to prop himself up a little. That way he looks aware or at least interested in whatever Ryan’s been saying. Because the guy’s been talking but Ray’s been more concerned with food.

“I know you’re not listening,” Ryan says very directly, which snaps Ray out of carefully examining an especially deformed piece of popcorn.

“What,” Ray says, fake outraged. “I’m a sniper, dude. I can multitask.”

“I asked you if Gavin was a genius and you went _sure_ at me.”

“Shit.” Ray tosses the piece of popcorn into his mouth. Through chewing, he continues talking, which makes Ryan visibly wince. “Y’found me out. Next time I call Gavin a genius, it means he’s dead and I’m trying to talk him up at his funeral. It’s either that or his fucking nose, let me tell you.”

“Ray,” Ryan says, and his voice is a little odd, barely suppressing laughter, “is your plan to just keep offending me in different ways until I get too overwhelmed and can’t even be pissed off at you?”

Ray sticks out his tongue at him. It’s childish as fuck, but it gets Ryan to almost cover his face and barely suppress some even more obvious laughter, which is worth it. In between all the murder and all the violence, Ryan’s a huge fucking dork. He likes books and wears glasses and is particular about what constitutes quality pop culture and what doesn’t. Ray also asked him to put out a tweet one time and he physically couldn’t handle it.

A dad. Who really should be teaching high school computer science and not shooting guys for a living.

“Okay, okay,” Ray says, sitting up and passing Ryan the bag of popcorn. “What’s up, then? If it’s such a big deal.”

Ryan hums a little and runs his index finger through some of the dust and dirt on the car’s hood. “What got you into doing this?”

“Doing what?”

The look Ryan gives him is more than a little judgmental. “Sniping. Like, why not college, or technical school, or anything else?”

“Dude, don’t ask me that kind of shit. I could ask you the same fucking thing.”

“Go the fuck ahead.”

Ray’s pre-programmed response to what he was expecting, which was Ryan rolling his eyes and going _fuck no, I’m not telling you shit_ promptly has to reevaluate itself. “Uh,” he says intelligently. Ryan chuckles and plucks a piece of popcorn out of the bag. No face paint today, so he looks pretty normal. They could just be a couple of guys. Guys being guys, dudes being dudes, no homo, all that shit.

After a couple seconds of reevaluating, Ray sits up, scoots closer to the side of the car, and fully swings his legs off the hood. They’re side by side now, Ryan looking out towards the treeline, Ray facing the opposite direction towards the road. “I mean - I was shit at school. Like, I probably could’ve scraped by with a diploma but it would’ve been close. And what other job do I get to spend most of my week playing video games for fun? It’s like, eighty percent of my week if I logged hours, Ryan. That’s an awesome percentage.”

“And then you spend the other twenty percent almost getting yourself killed.”

Ray waves it off. “Normal workplace hazards."

“That’s it, huh?”

“Yeah.” Ray finally gambles a look over at Ryan. The bag of popcorn is sitting on the hood now, out of Ryan’s hands, and the guy’s looking at him. “That’s it.”

Ryan makes another non-committal hum. That really means _I don’t believe you, but okay_. Because they both have an ability to let things go, at least with each other, that Ray appreciates.

“What about you?” Get Ryan’s attention off of him. That’s what that question’s about.

Ryan shrugs. “I was good at college. I just didn’t enjoy it very much. I would’ve probably ended up being some kind of IT guy.”

“Fucking Geek Squad,” Ray mutters. “You could pull off the look.”

“So could you.”

“Nah. I’m too cool for that. You’re like - you’d probably be a fucking computer science professor. You look like one. Grading essays and being judgmental and shit.”

“Well. I didn’t know that’s what you were into, Ray.”

“Fuck you,” Ray snaps. He shoves Ryan hard with his shoulder. Ryan chuckles again, not moving a single inch. And they haven’t really told each other anything at all. They’re good at that, each of them. Saying something. Not saying enough of something else. Measuring out what is it and isn’t okay, but never having to say so.

 _How are you and Ryan hanging out so much_ , Michael asked one time. _He’s like, a dad, and you’re a nerd_.

 _Don’t worry_ , Ray told him _, he’s just giving me tips on the best way to kill Gavin_.

Michael nodded. _Okay. Fair._ A pause. _Hey, can you text me some of those sometime?_

_I’ve been trying to get him to start a blog about his ideas, so if that gets up and running, I’ll let you know, man._

\---

Ray gets kind of convinced for a while that Ryan’s got some kind of supernatural ability to fit in just about anywhere.

For a relevant example: heist number seven since Ryan’s induction and murder hazing involves the crew rubbing elbows with some rich guys at a party. That means suits, and ties, and Gavin somehow losing his tie in the car between the penthouse and the other even bigger party-themed penthouse of the night. Ray has just been sinking further and further into the corner of the backseat, trying his best to not think about what one could call _Paleto Bay politician types_ being near him again. It just makes him feel fucking gross. He’s going to have to go home and scrub until the smell of too many floral arrangements comes off.

Ryan also looks really good. While most of the crew had to go obtain a suit for this, Ryan just _had one prepared_ for some reason, and it’s all fitted and tailored all to shit. The tie has a perfect knot at his throat. It’s a fucking problem.

But they get there, and Ray discreetly pours three glasses of champagne out into various potted plants. He excuses himself to the bathroom around four times mostly to get away from people and play literally anything on his DS in a bathroom stall. Gavin even gets the wifi password from someone, which Ray instantly gets out of him. That’ll be his saving grace here.

He actually loses Ryan for a good forty-five minutes. He sees everyone else - Geoff constantly adjusting his cuffs as rich people stare at his tattoos, for example. Ray stands next to Michael as they load up their plates with rich people food, all French names and gourmet ingredients. Gavin’s easy to track with the accent and an inability to have volume control. Jack keeps to the corners of the room, observing and smiling gently at anyone who talks with him.

Ryan Haywood seems to have evaporated from the premises until Ray gets caught in a conversation with an incredibly judgmental older businessman.

He actually patronizingly says _hello, young man_ and Ray’s mind blanks out for a second with the number of comments that he could make in return.

“Hi,” he eventually manages, which is a huge step up from _the fuck do you want_ and _what’s up, dipshit, how much did that watch cost, just wondering for when I steal it off your dead, dead ass._

The guy’s smiling. Ray hates when rich people smile like that - too wide and too accommodating, _oh, isn’t it nice you’ve managed to come so far_. He says something about them not having met before, and Ray’s mouth is moving in the required syllables of how nice it is to meet him even though he really wants to be anywhere else. And just when a question starts up with the word _what’s a nice_ , someone else steps in right next to Ray, almost too close.

“Mister Renshaw,” Ryan says, and his voice has this extra tone to it. All the Georgia drawl has seemingly been wiped away, waiting in the wings. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I just had a quick question for you.”

Ray stiffens a little and edges a few feet away, making some vague notions of goodbye. He lingers close enough to be listening in, but also far enough way where he can stare down at some food on offer. Then, unfortunately, he has to listen as Ryan flawlessly ingratiates himself with the upper crust of Los Santos, laughing at all the right moments and talking about things like _capital_ and _the GDP_. Fucking college educated bastards. Bantering and shit.

“That’s a nice watch,” Ryan says, his tone the tone of a man knowing that he’s feeding someone’s ego.

“Oh,” _Mister Renshaw_ says, “ _This_ little thing? Seriously? Barely anything. But it looks nice, I’ll admit. Only a few grand.”

Ray plucks a cracker with some weird arrangement of rich person crap on top off of a platter and shoves it into his mouth to keep looking busy.

Ryan audibly fucks up a whole sentence and somehow manages to laugh it off. Ray’s disgusted and impressed at once, which is a fun cocktail of emotions to have when Ryan’s dressed that well in a suit.

He turns around just in time to meet _Mister Renshaw’s_ ever-judgmental look.

“Really, can you believe the kinds of people they’re letting in here,” _Mister Renshaw_ says to Ryan. He’s looking at Ray the whole time. Ray swallows and makes direct eye contact. Out of spite.

Ray sees Ryan’s entire posture shift for a single second. It’s James Ryan Haywood, an unknown upper class type from the eastern United States, shifting for a single second to Ryan fucking Haywood, the Vagabond. Ryan’s right thumb runs across his own index finger for a moment, the beginnings of a fist almost forming and then relaxing. Renshaw must be truly brain-dead to not notice.

“Oh, I know, Mark,” Ryan says easily, and he’s looking directly at Mark Renshaw the whole time. “The types of people we just accept into our lives nowadays.”

Ray stares Mark Renshaw right in the eyes, grins, and turns back to the table in order to not pull out the knife he has strapped to his side and kill him. Ray’s not the truly homicidal type, as a general rule, but some people are just really asking for it. He moves down the line towards the drinks. Right when he’s lurking around in front of some weird cocktails, picking one up and thinking about “accidentally” dumping it onto Renshaw, a familiar presence eases over in front of some French pastries.

“Hey,” Ryan says.

“Done making nice with Mark?” Ray asks, more than a little bitter.

Ryan laughs. “If you can call it that. What a fucking prick.”

“Don’t say that too loud. Either someone’ll get offended or Gavin’ll be proud you picked up a word from him.”

Ray glances over in time to catch Ryan’s deep and genuine horror. “Oh, fuck. I can’t let Gavin think - oh my God.” He shakes his head and then holds out a glass of water towards Ray as if they’re just conversing normally. Ray takes it and smiles, not even trying to make it look formal. Fuck this. Fuck playing pretend for the benefit of a room in which a third of the occupants at least are going to be dead in an hour.

Plus, he really needs to get away from Ryan in a suit. Otherwise he’ll start having thoughts he doesn’t like to consider.

“You look good tonight,” Ryan says calmly, completely derailing Ray’s own train of thought. Shit. Haywood’s a fucking mind reader like he suspected, but he got the subject all mixed up.

“Dude, you’re a fucking liar,” Ray says, “Did you not hear the bullshit we had to go through to get me into a suit? Jack had to teach me how to tie one of these.” He tugs at his tie a little, fucking up the perfect knot. “I mean, I always look great, yeah, but you’re on some weird scary level way past mine.”

“Aw. Thanks. I try.” Ryan tilts a glass towards him in the slightest hint of a toast. He moves past Ray. For a single moment one of Ryan’s hands presses gently against Ray’s back, applying minimal but steady pressure, and it takes every single ounce of self control Ray has to not stiffen at the contact.

Ray’s breath ghosts out of his mouth anyway, an utter betrayal.

Ryan’s smirk is one hundred percent the worst thing Ray’s scene since the last time he saw a dead guy up close. And Ryan’s even closer than the last corpse he saw, smug and terrible three inches away. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Um,” Ray says, and knocks back the entire glass of water at once to keep his mouth shut.

Later, after they’ve killed the last few people remaining at the party, Ray comes out of the very nice kitchen with some snacks and some expensive jewelry shoved into his pockets. Jack’s got the art they were here to steal stowed away while Ryan went to make sure their escape vehicles were secured.

Ah. Ryan’s back upstairs already. This is one of their smaller heists in scope, but it’s really just meant to scare the upper crust out of complacency that the Fake AH Crew is surely only hitting banks now, not people.

“Hey,” Ryan says easily, “look at what I found.” The statement is squarely directed at Ray and no one else.

He holds up Mark Renshaw’s distinctive watch with a shit-eating grin. Then he tosses it between them and Ray’s hand snaps up to catch it without his brain getting involved.

“How,” Ray begins. He’s pretty sure he saw the guy leaving near the end of the night.

Ryan smiles thinly. “I happened to run into him downstairs.”

“And?”

“And,” Ryan says, tugging off the gloves that make him look like some kind of bellhop, “he’s taking a nice permanent nap in a supply closet right now.” His hands are bloody underneath the gloves, bright red caked underneath his nails. Ray swallows. He should probably feel some sense of moral outrage. Call Ryan a monster. But he can’t. He kills people too, and if anything, at least Ryan does it fucking personally. Ray sits on a building. He takes potshots and people fall down.

Ryan once called what he does art. Ray still calls it a paycheck. But he’s starting to turn over to the enemy on that topic. Maybe there is something elegant in it.

“I don’t need it,” Ray begins.

“Just sell it.”

“Oh.” Ray’s hand closes around the watch. “Y’know, before you showed up, I was just looking at that guy’s watch like _dude, tell me how much that is so I can get a good price for it when I pick it off your corpse_ , so I’m glad to know you were lying about not being a mind reader.”

“Not a mind reader,” Ryan insists with another warm laugh. “But you know what they say. Great minds.”

“Welcome to fucking MENSA, asshole,” Ray says, punching Ryan’s arm. Ryan rubs the spot even though there’s no chance that even hurt. It’s just to humor Ray. And then he laughs, and Ray’s grinning too.

Ray still has Renshaw’s watch thrown in a drawer in his room at the penthouse. He tells himself it’s for a rainy day, if he really needs cash at that moment. But he doesn’t think he’s ever going to sell it, even he’s out on the street and about to fucking starve to death. It means something. He didn’t pay enough attention in high school English to know what, though.

\---

The List gets revised after that. Meet number five, and number six, and also number seven, just to be sure.

  1. Don’t smile too wide whenever someone else in the crew throws Ryan a casual compliment like you’re proud or anything.


  1. Focus on heists. Don’t try to keep an eye on Ryan and _also_ keep an eye on everyone else. The infamous mercenary called the Vagabond can take care of himself. He doesn’t need you watching over him like a concerned mom.


  1. If you’re too tired, keep your mouth _fucking shut_ around Ryan, you dumb fuck, you love to stay stupid shit all the time, but there’s a line between _stupid_ and _dangerous_ with a guy that you saw throw one guy through a tenth story window, gut another guy, and shoot a third in the head in the space of about three minutes. Especially when that guy keeps giving you these long looks with like five different emotions running through them.



And he saw that last part, three murders in three minutes, on a heist last week, which clearly breaks the code of number six.

He’s already a failure and he’s barely started.

\---

After the Renshaw incident, Ryan and Ray go out doing what they’ve started just doing now post-heists. They commit smaller crimes in the wake of the larger crimes. And sure, there’s strategic usefulness - it gets people nervous, not complacent, and it keeps the police busy, which is always a positive. Ray’s gotten comfortable with it after the convenience store the first time. No one else in the crew is comfortable with it. Geoff complains, Michael gives them skeptical looks, Gavin tries to get them to stop being “idiots”, direct quote, but really, who’s the idiot here, and Jack shakes his head while patching up wounds.

Today’s a tiny antiques store. For no good reason beyond Ryan’s statement that _there might be something cool there_.

Something _cool_. It’s a fucking antiques store. Ryan’s an old man. That’s who Ray’s befriended.

Either way, Ryan finds some knives he likes. That’s what really matters. The guy behind the counter is holed up in the supply closet behind the counter, and him dialing 911 is really audible. Ryan rolls his eyes and brushes some of the shattered glass out of the display case so he can get at the knives.

He holds one up to the light. They’re wasting time, but Ray can’t exactly just grab the knives and get them into the car.

He’s holding a firework launcher, after all.

“Ry,” Ray says. “I know this is awesome and sick and all, and I’m really happy you’re cradling your lost child there, but - the cops.”

“Mmhm,” Ryan mumbles, flicking one of the knives open and tilting it. He presses the sharp edge against his finger as if testing the sharpness of the edge. It takes Ray a second to realize that’s exactly what Ryan’s doing as the creepy fucker grins down at the thin red line blooming on his own thumb. Ray doesn’t catch himself staring until after Ryan rubs his thumb and forefinger together, smearing blood across both. “I hear you,” he says, starting to turn, and Ray has the damn sense to focus on the door again.

Yeah. That’s where he was looking the whole time, definitely.

And where he’s looking now has three cop cars assembled outside.

“Shit,” Ray says, trying to figure out what to do with the firework launcher. Ryan told him it was expensive, so he’s not going to _leave it_ , but he really needs to take out his gun right now. Ryan has a knife in each hand, which makes him look like a cool guy, but this isn’t a movie. Knowing Ryan, though, those knives aren’t going anywhere except in his hands or in someone’s throat through hell and high water.

A cop, outside, through the loudspeaker: “Put down your weapons. Walk out of the store with your hands in the air. Cooperate, or we will be forced to shoot you.”

“They want to shoot us so bad, dude,” Ray says.

“I can tell. Out the back?”

Ray hums a little. It’s a habit he’s been picking up from Ryan, which he denies when asked about it. Even if he knows the truth. “Nah, they’ll just fucking shoot one of us in the back.”

“That’s no good,” Ryan murmurs, his grip shifting on the knife as if he’s about to throw one.

And Ray really doesn’t want to see Ryan have to permanently give up one of those knives that they just stole, for God’s sake. That’s not fair. They earned those knives Ryan evidently likes quite a bit. So Ray hoists the firework launcher up on his shoulder and points it out the open door, right at one of the cops - the one with the loudspeaker, actually.

The cop stares at him, evidently confused.

“Wha -,” the guy begins into the loudspeaker, evidently forgetting that the thing’s still on.

So, that’s the story of how Ray shoots a Los Santos police officer in the chest with a firework.

The firework explodes on contact, red, white, and blue sparks shooting everywhere. The sound’s nasty - a weird crunch mixed with the explosion. The officer gets blown back right into his car door with a crunch, sliding down to hit the floor. Ray stares a little.

Wow. Okay. Firework safety totally does need to be a thing after all.

Suddenly he’s being dragged backwards, Ryan’s hand gripping his collar, knives probably stowed in his pockets, and Ray rips himself away to turn around and start running. Good thing they parked in the back and walked around, because as Ryan puts his shoulder into the back exit, the dimming sunlight glints off the hood of their car. It is very nearly an actual Hollywood moment.

Ryan yanks open the driver’s door as Ray throws himself into the back with the launcher. “Go,” he hisses, “go, fucking drive.”

The stick shift clicks into place. Ryan sends them spinning out into Los Santos streets, perfect fucking turn radius out into traffic.

“Ray,” Ryan says, and Ray realizes the guy’s been laughing the whole time. “Ray, you just shot a cop with a firework, what the _fuck_ is wrong with you.”

“It’s ‘cause you wouldn’t put down one of your precious fucking knives, you dumb fuck, if you had just pulled out a gun, there wouldn’t have been a reason for me to shoot a cop with a firework -”

“Oh my God,” Ryan wheezes, slapping his hand on the wheel as if this is a joke, and Ray realizes that he’s not listening at all. “Los Santos PD is going to be royally _pissed_.”

“What,” Ray says flatly.

“See,” Ryan says, catching his gaze in the rearview mirror, “this kind of shit is why you’re my favorite.” Well, there’s one hell of a sentence.

Nod and smile, Ray. Nod and fucking smile.

\---

It takes a while for Ray to figure out what exactly Ryan meant by _the capacity_ to torture someone.

In fact, it takes this one time, almost a year and a half after Ryan first showed up, and the two of them on a simple mission to put the fear of God (meaning the Fakes, because that’s what they are in this city at this point) back into one of the little startups that think they can get in on the heist game.

 _Ray, Ryan_ , Geoff said, leaning over the map of Los Santos like always. _Get in there. Kill ‘em dead_.

Simple. Easy. Ryan strapped up with enough firepower to kill three other startups along the way, just in case. It wasn’t going to be a good structure for sniping - not a lot of windows or good vantage points. A taller building in the area instead of a shorter one. Not a useful recipe for Ray’s specialty. So Ray brought two pistols, extra magazines, and a few knives. He wasn’t too great with knives still, especially when standing next to Ryan, but they worked as deterrence and he could get a good few swipes and stabs in if it got desperate.

Really, Ray was just going to give Ryan someone to watch his back. It was rare they were assigned solitary objectives.

After all: if you’re alone, there’s no one to tow you home if you get yourself shot.

They cleared out the building fast enough. It was easy - Ray behind Ryan, keeping watch and shooting anyone who tried to be smart and flank Ryan. Ryan was pretty much a walking whirlwind of knives and bullets - hyperaware in a way that had always made Ray doubt Ryan’s assertion that he had no military training.

It takes all the way to the end of clearing everything out - the _denouement_ , as Ryan pretentiously fucking calls it.

Everyone was dead. Ray had paced a little ahead of Ryan to examine some of the supplies, checking to see if anything was worth carrying back to the car. Mostly guns and ammunition they could obtain just about anywhere, but some of them might be expensive enough to take. Ray’s pistol dangled loosely by his side.

The noise Ryan suddenly makes is something Ray’s sure he won’t forget. Ever.

It’s a soft wheeze, a strange exhale. Ray spins around just in time to see a kid - maybe two or three years younger than Ray - wearing the gang’s colors and backing up, his hands still out in front of him.

Ryan’s already yanking the serrated knife out of his back. The knife clatters to the floor. He staggers forward a little and falls forward, too fucking still, and Ray blanks the hell out.

His arm works without his brain. He raises the pistol and then lowers it while the kid backs up a little more, hands empty. Two shots. One to each knee. The kid yelps and topples. Out of the corner of his eye, Ray catches Ryan sitting up slowly, one hand pressed against whatever part of his back just got a fucking knife in it. Normally Ray would trust Ryan to just take care of business, knife wound or no.

But there’s a difference between this and something normal. Rage leaps up bright and hot in Ray’s chest and throat, and the kid’s fucking _wailing_ as he clutches at his mutilated knees. Normal Ray might feel some pity. Might leave him or put the kid out of his misery. Ray now, whatever kind of person he is (or maybe the person he’s always been, there’s a fucking thought), has absolutely none of that emotional connection.

“Who the _fuck_ do you think you are?” Ray snaps, and there’s something to that - sounds like something Ryan would say while on a power trip, and he’s trying to not think about it. “Newsflash, asshole, if you thought you were going to get rewarded for that by your buddies, everyone who would give you a pat on the back and a fucking lollipop is _dead now_.”

He’s standing next to the kid by now who’s staring up at him with wide terrified eyes. Ray keeps the gun firmly pointed at his head.

“Couldn’t even fucking stab me somewhere to kill me. I don’t believe in half-assed attempts on my life,” Ryan groans from nearby.

“Shut the hell up, Ryan. Stop trying to be a smartass when you’re fucking bleeding out, I swear to God.”

Ryan’s smile is audible. “Okay, Dad.” God, Ray’s going to fucking _kill him_ if he keeps wasting breaths bantering and being - well, Ryan.

The kid’s whimpering now. Ray pulls another page from Ryan’s book and places one of his tennis shoes on the kid’s throat. It gets a lot quieter and a lot less pitiful, which is nice. “Here’s the thing, man. It’s my job to watch this shithead’s back.” He gestures with his free hand in Ryan’s direction. “And I’ve been doing great so far, all the way up until your scrawny ass decided to try to be smart. So I’m going to have to kill you. You realize that? Like, if you had just stayed hidden and waited, you could’ve walked out of here and been fine. But, no.”

Shaking hands clutch at Ray’s ankle. “Oh, sorry,” Ray snaps, “having a hard time?”

He steps away. The kid inhales desperately, choking on the sudden influx of air, and Ray wastes no time in bringing his heel down hard on one of his ruined knees.

The noise that comes afterwards is a yell that trails off into a sob. Normally that would worry Ray. Normally it would make him feel anything except a cold stab of pleasure, of _I fucking told you so_ , that sits in his gut.

He can feel Ryan’s eyes on him. That’s both good and bad. On one hand, this is pretty much all about Ryan. On the other hand, Ray knows that he’s proving Ryan right, which he hates on another level.

The kid rolls around a little. He curls up, trying to bring his knee closer to his chest. Tears are rolling down his cheeks. Ray kicks him hard in the ribs a few times for good measure until something audibly snaps.

Ryan makes a soft pained noise. Ray spins around. Ryan waves a hand at him as if to tell him to go back to whatever he’s doing, even though it’s obvious the man’s in pain. Ray snaps out another curse and glances back just in order to shoot the kid in the head. Bloody fingers still twitch close to Ray’s foot even after his eyes turn glassy.

“Ryan,” Ray says.

Ryan gives him a weak thumbs-up from the floor. Fucking dork.

“Hey. Talk to me, motherfucker. Don’t just make fucking hand signs.”

“Don’t worry.” Wow, okay, that’s not what Ray wants to fucking hear. And just as Ray opens his mouth to get pissed off, Ryan cuts him off again. Words are leaking a little slower than normal from his mouth, but at least he’s talking. “I called Jack while you were busy over there. They’re on their way.”

Tension leaks out of Ray’s shoulders before he even realizes it. “God. I’m going to take back calling you a shithead.”

“Thanks,” Ryan grins. “I appreciate it.” He’s somehow managing to look pretty while injured.

Ray keeps an eye on the exits until Jack and Geoff burst in, a first aid kit in Jack’s hand. Ray himself is so on edge that he nearly shoots Geoff, but he manages to pull his finger back from the trigger before his reflexes makes a bad situation worse.

In the car, Ryan leaning up against Ray, a new patch of gauze pressed along his back, Ryan’s voice is very soft under the radio and natural noise of the car and the road. Ray still doesn’t know he heard him. Maybe - and this makes Ray’s blood boil - maybe he’s just seeking out the sound of Ryan’s voice at this point.

The mask is off. Ryan’s face paint is smudged with sweat and some blood transferred from his hands. He’s like a space heater up close against Ray’s side. This is probably the closest they’ve ever been for this long. It’s not like they’re the platonic cuddling types.

“You should get self-righteous more often,” Ryan tells him.

“I don’t think anyone wants to see that shit.” Ray is trying his hardest to twist this into a joke. Ryan’s either too delirious to notice or he’s serious with the look he’s pinning Ray against the car door with.

Ryan’s voice, nearly hoarse as it is, twists into sincerity. “I do.”

\---

Watching Ryan heal up is the worst thing in the world. Ryan is an active kind of guy. So when Jack tells him to stay in fucking bed for a bit, Ryan immediately starts up with the protests, struggling to sit up and show that he is totally functional.

Ray, in the corner of the room: “Ryan, do what Jack fucking tells you or else I’m going to steal handcuffs from a cop and cuff you to your fucking bed.”

“Aren’t you kinky,” Ryan mutters.

Ray decides to chalk that comment up to the painkillers that actually wore off about three hours ago. They’re just still working their way through Ryan’s systems, making him a little delirious and out of it. Yeah. That’s not worth responding to. But either way, Ray becomes Ryan’s babysitter for a few weeks while the guy complains. So Ray does - well. He does domestic things.

He gets Ryan books from the library, for God’s sake, and sits there on his DS while Ryan reads them until he falls asleep, glasses slipping off of his nose.

They don’t talk about it once Ryan is up and walking around again. No one really mentions it. Afraid of pushing buttons, probably.

Ryan does say just one thing, though, two days after he’s shuffling around the penthouse again, a much nicer person when he’s not restricted to bedrest.

“Hey.” He catches Ray’s arm gently, reflexes still as good as they were pre-stabbing somehow. Ray freezes and rotates, trying to bounce the Hot Pocket burning his fingers from one hand to the other captured by Ryan. Ryan makes sure to make eye contact with him. Ray stares right into Ryan’s eyes, blue just as bright as ever. “You didn’t have to do all of that shit for me. Thanks.”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Ray says, tossing the Hot Pocket back to his other hand.

“You say that about everything,” Ryan points out with a smirk.

“Yeah, well, that’s me. Shit doesn’t matter.”

“That’s interesting,” Ryan says softly. “I’ve seen that some shit does matter to you. A lot.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ray’s mouth says for him. “Like what?” That should not be a challenge. Ray knows exactly what Ryan’s talking about, but his fucking inability to shut up is about to prove just how well he knows Ryan by now.

His hand’s really starting to hurt with the death grip he now has on this innocent Hot Pocket. But he really doesn’t feel like it’s appropriate to move.

Ryan winks. He lets Ray’s arm go. “Guess,” he says.

Ray tries to give him the kind of look he gives Gavin, the _what the fuck are you talking about_ look. “Okay, dude. Whatever you say.”

“Oh,” Ryan says. He sounds disappointed. “We’re not going back to square fucking one, are we?”

Something cracks a little in Ray’s facade. “Listen, I don’t think that’d be possible even if I wanted us to.”

A smile springs back up to Ryan’s face instantly. Talk about emotional whiplash. “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

Ray finally breaks away from Ryan’s gaze. He tosses the Hot Pocket to his free hand carefully. God, his other hand’s almost fucking numb.

By the time he makes it back to his room, Ray’s mind is drifting. What the _fuck_ did he just agree to? What the hell is he doing? This isn’t his job. This isn’t _him_. Or it is. Or it really, really is. All the relationships he’s had before this, rare as they were, weren’t like this. And they didn’t last. So maybe this is the kind of relationship Ray has wanted all along.

He doesn’t mean relationship like _romance_ , of course. That’d be fucking ridiculous. He just means - a certain kind of friendship. Yes.

In the trash can in his room, Ray catches sight of the pair of shoes he had to throw out after Ryan got stabbed, an upturned heel permanently stained dark red.

\---

For once it’s Michael and Ray hanging out, like the pre-crew days.

They’re playing Halo split-screen at Michael’s apartment against each other, too, which really just gets that nostalgia engine going. Ray is kicking Michael’s ass, but really, who would’ve expected otherwise.

“So what’s up with you and Ryan?” Michael asks. For that question, he earns a kill against Ray. Ray curses, and it’s half at Michael killing him with a shotgun and half at the question itself. “You gotta tell me what’s been going down in Casa Vagabond and Brownman.”

“We aren’t - we aren’t fucking living together, dude, fuck off.”

“I’m just trying to connect with you by using your native language or whatever.”

“Sorry, dude, _no habla_ _asshole_.”

“Fuck you,” Michael says, and they’re both chuckling.”Seriously, though. What the fuck’s going on with you guys?”

“We’re just friends.”

“Uh-huh.” Ray’s going to fucking beat the skepticism right out of Michael’s voice. In Halo, of course. “And Gavin’s just a _little bit_ of an asshole, and Geoff’s just a _little bit_ of an alcoholic.”

“I mean it. For all I know, Ryan has some secret ex-supermodel wife he’s hiding from all of us.” He almost said _from me_ , but that might lead Michael down a path of guessing that Ray’s jealous or something. And that won’t do.

“Dude, probably. Bet you he got so many girls when he was younger.”

“He said he didn’t. And I will tell you that when he’s tired, he just starts talking about, like, books and math and shit. No ex-supermodel would stick with him.”

“Awww,” Michael coos, staring at the screen the whole time, “you know what he’s like when he’s _sleepy_. So fucking domestic, seriously. Just get out the ring and propose already.”

On screen, Ray’s character stabs Michael’s with an energy sword three times in a row out of spite. “You’re a piece of shit,” Ray says evenly as Michael curses and waves the controller around a little.

Him and Ryan are a weird thing. Friends, sure, and maybe a little more than normal friends, but that’s where shit stops.

Yeah, fucking right. Ray is great at lying. And that just means he knows when he’s lying to himself.

\---

Ryan knows how to drive a motorcycle. Ray’s not surprised, really, the two of them on a heist and needing to get away. And they end up on a black sports bike, wind rushing against them, Ryan dodging and weaving in and out of travel lanes. Ray’s delirious from adrenaline and the slight hit of pain where he twisted his ankle diving behind cover earlier. He’s delirious on the way this heist went down, too, how they (Ray and Ryan, Ryan and Ray, yeah, there’s a good pair of words put together) were actually on the ground together for once. It’s a rare thing. It’s a good thing.

He tries not to think about how close he is to Ryan right now. He switches the pistol from his right to his left hand and shoots out a police car’s tires to distract himself. Ryan laughs, loud and wild, as the car careens into a highway divider and fucking _flips_ in the air.

“Jesus fuck,” Ryan laughs as the car lands on its roof on the other side of the divider, sending other drivers skidding away and crashing into each other. Ray can feel the way the words vibrate in Ryan’s chest. That’s how close they are.

Ray really needs to stop thinking about how close they are, but it’s hard, when whatever cologne Ryan uses is right in his fucking nose, and he keeps getting a great look at what Ryan’s shoulders do under his jacket when he twists the bike this way or that.

Suddenly they turn and skid towards the ramp off the highway, cutting across two lanes of traffic. “God,” Ray spits, the words sharp and clear in his head, “God _fucking_ damn it, I’d kill someone if it meant getting to do this for the rest of my life.” It’s probably the most honest thing he’s ever said, the situation letting something truthful fall out into the air between them.

Ray can feel Ryan’s spine stiffen. “So would I,” he says, his voice soft and more reverent than anything as they hit the ramp and some quiet finally reigns for a moment.

And lost in the many other minutes of the drive back, of dodging cop cars and losing helicopters in the maze of Los Santos’s back alleys, Ray allows himself to think that okay, maybe he does love Ryan in a very bad way. When he was worried about Ryan towing bodies back to Ray like a homicidal cat, maybe Ray should’ve been worried about things happening the other way around.

 _I love him_ , Ray thinks as Ryan tugs off the skull mask in a side alley, bloody, his hair askew, face paint a confused mess of black and red and white. _Shit. I fucking love him._

It’s a thought that he knows is going to get lost in the rest of the night, but it still drops inside of him like a stone, a guttural kind of knowledge.

\---

The List, revisited and revised yet again. Drop five, and six, and seven.

Number five now goes like this: there’s a lot of bad shit going on all the time, as in Ray might get himself killed at any point, or Ryan might get himself killed at any point, which means he’s got to hold onto the honest to God good shit, and Ray knows he’s too much of a coward to jump the gun and actually say anything to Ryan. And if he did, it’d just turn out to be something like _dude, I know this is going to sound really gay, but I think I actually really like-like you, for real_. Which would make Ryan laugh, and also miss the point.

So. He can’t say anything. But he also knows Ryan has limited patience. He has limited patience with everything - murder, and books, and Gavin.

And when Ryan’s reservoir of patience finally runs out - Ray is not going to let himself back down. Tune in. Get focused. Actually say human words in English instead of spitting out a quip and sprinting away.

He’s a sniper, after all. He’s a professional at waiting until the perfect moment.

\---

“Ray,” Ryan says from the driver’s seat.

Ray makes a noise to let him know he’s listening, even as he takes up the whole backseat of the car on his own. He even tugs an earphone out, just to reinforce how much he’s paying attention.

“C’mon. Get up here. You’re going to want to see this.”

“It’s just Michael blowing up another fucking building, dude. We see that once per heist minimum.”

“There’s a reason I drove all the way up here, and it’s not so you can sit in the back like a fucking teenager.”

“You swear that the view’s going to be that good?”

Ryan grins back at him. “Yeah. I do. So get your ass up here.”

Ray’s gotten better at climbing over the console without kicking Ryan since the very first time outside of that convenience store. Ryan grumbles to himself the whole time, but he also moves aside to let Ray rearrange himself in the passenger seat. Ray gets himself comfortable, the other earphone falling out of his ears just in time to see the huge warehouse in the middle of Los Santos go up in flames. The sound manages to make it all the way up to this part of Mount Chiliad, a sonic boom unlike just about anything else Ray’s ever heard.

Ryan lets out an appreciative whistle next to him, leaning closer to the windshield. “God damn,” he murmurs, which has about the most Georgian drawl he’s ever allowed into his voice.

“I fucking know, right,” Ray says, and he’s looking at the way the light of the explosion flickers in its dying moments across Ryan’s face, right before the night floods back in.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Big Bird" by AJJ. If Ryan's early stuff with Ray has a Mother Mother tone, Ray's 100% AJJ.


End file.
